


Meet Me in St. Louis

by Gimmemocha



Series: Rachel Davenport [3]
Category: Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter - Laurell K. Hamilton
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-06
Updated: 2016-01-05
Packaged: 2018-05-12 03:29:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5650909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gimmemocha/pseuds/Gimmemocha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The 18k, never-to-be-finished, 3rd story in the Rachel Davenport series. I couldn't figure out how to send it to you, Izzy, so here you go!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Izzy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Izzy/gifts).



I sat back to admire the view. Jacob, trapped beneath me, slid his hands over my naked thighs, his smile thin and predatory as he looked up at me. The white sheets turned silver in the light coming through the windows, just enough illumination to emphasize the darker tan of his skin, the ruffled darkness of his hair on my pillows. 

I let my hungry hands splay across his chest, savoring the textures against my sensitive fingertips. The springy curls of black hair across his pecs made a sensuous contrast to the softness of his skin and the strength of his muscles. I caught my breath, nipped my lower lip as if to contain it. My hips shifted, an involuntary show of my own impatience, but I was savoring what was going to happen.

His thighs flexed as he fought his own impulse to rise up, but other reflexes weren’t as easy to control. He was hard against my softness, and I shifted just to slide across his shaft. I was wet and hot, and stroked him like silk. His chest expanded under my hands, and I felt him shake.

I smiled, long and slow. It was only going to get better from here. I leaned forward, then rocked back, guiding the head of his cock into me, a small penetration. His hands grabbed my ass, fingers digging in, protesting the pause. I pressed my hips lower, felt him slide deeper inside me. My gasp cloaked his as I ground down, taking every inch of him I could.

My rhythm was steady, slow and deep. I locked my eyes on his, feeling anticipation build, hunger demand satiation, but half the fun was in keeping myself waiting, teasing myself. His blue eyes glazed over, and his hips came off the bed to meet mine. I curled the fingers of one hand, clenching his chest hair, offering myself this little tidbit of pain to try and extend the pleasure.

But such measures are always temporary at best. His upward thrusts were becoming more insistent, his breathing was ragged. I could see his pulse jumping in his throat. And I didn’t want to wait. I wanted. I needed. I had to have. I slammed down on him over and over, driving him hard, riding him. The pitch of his breathing scaled upward. Now, I knew. Now.

My free hand stole to one side, closing around something hard and cold and sleek. I trembled with hunger, bared my teeth in a ferocious grin. His back arched up off the bed as he came. With one hard thrust, I shoved the knife under the notch in his ribcage, spearing his heart and twisting the blade to sever it entirely. I screamed, shuddered under the force of my orgasm, came in one explosion after another as the light faded from his eyes, as he grew still under me.

I snapped awake, screaming again and scrambling halfway out of bed before I realized I was awake. My hands clenched, and I realized they were both empty. There was no knife, no slow leaking of hot blood across my knuckles. I even had clothes on.

“Rachel,” someone said from the bedroom door, an insistent tone that told me this wasn’t the first call.

I blinked at the silhouette, and waited as waking memory overcame the residue of the dream. “Sam,” I identified. I huffed a shaky sigh, and hesitated before running a hand through my hair. There was no blood on it, I had to remind myself. It still felt like there should be.

“Yeah,” Sam said. “Another nightmare?”

I nodded, knowing the dim light wasn’t much of a hindrance to him. Werewolves have perfectly good night vision. “You should’ve woken me.”

“I didn’t want to come in,” he said.

His voice sounded odd, low and rough. Actually, it wasn’t odd. I knew what it was. It was hunger. I reached for the bedside lamp and snapped it on, filling the room with sixty-five watts of dream-dispelling light. We both blinked, but I narrowed my eyes to look him over.

He shook his head. “I’m fine,” he said. 

In the aftermath of my dream, I saw Sam...differently. He was maybe 5’10”, lithe, had skin the color of a melted chocolate bar, and he was wearing only a pair of pajama bottoms. His skin was dusky soft, hints of perspiration dotting his forehead. I noticed his long fingers curling around the door frame, holding the wood in a tight grip. His chest twitched as he saw my slow inspection of him, the sleek muscles clenching and releasing. 

“I just... You smell... ready,” he said.

A tiny spark of fear flared in my heart, sending passion on its merry way. “I don’t smell like anything else, do I?” I asked. “I mean, I just smell like...”

“Lust,” he clarified. I heard him inhale, draw a deep breath and hold it. When he spoke again, his voice was softer. “You smell like heat and need.”

“But not blood?”

That surprised him a little. “Blood? No. Should you?”

Whew. I set about reconstructing myself, hiding my vulnerabilities. “Given the way you’re acting,” I said, dry and sardonic, “it’s probably best that I don’t. You sure you’re ok?”

Sam was a relatively new were, only four months along. His first month had been spent in very close contact with the main body of the pack. My apartment was functioning as a kind of halfway house for him. As the pack vargamor and a witch, I could handle him if he started to spaz out, but he had to learn how to cope on his own. We were a week away from the full moon; he’d only be here another day or so before going to stay with one of the pack. After that, if both his other sponsor and I gave him the thumbs-up, he’d be back in his own place.

“I’m fine,” he assured me, then gave himself a rapid shake. “Fine. How ‘bout you? You gonna go back to sleep?”

I glanced at the clock across the room. 4:30. Only two hours until the alarm. “No,” I sighed. “No point. I’m too edgy to drop off. I think I’ll get a shower.”

“Okay.” He watched me a minute longer. “It was just a dream, right Rachel?”

“Yeah,” I said, untangling my legs from the sheet. “Had to be. In real life, Jacob would never be on the bottom.”

I didn’t bother to explain. It wasn’t like the entire pack was completely nose-blind. They all knew that Jacob and I had a mad hot-on for each other. Jacob was all for it; heck, even Jacob’s lupa, Katherine, was in favor of it, if just to calm Jacob’s temper. I was the one who kept saying no. 

I cranked up the hot water in the shower and stood under the spray, letting it sear away the tendrils of the nightmare that didn’t quite want to let go. My hair plastered hard against my skull, and I ducked my head, bracing my hands on the wall in front of me. The jets of water pounded against the back of my neck, soothing and battering at the tension.

It still seemed odd that the water swirling down the drain was clear. I couldn’t shake the impression of blood. I couldn’t get clean of how good it had felt, knowing that I was going to kill him as he came, knowing he didn’t know. I recalled too clearly the feel of the knife, the sweet anticipation of holding it lightly in my hand, the sure stroke, the way his skin had slid apart around the sharp point, his soft grunt of surprise...

I shuddered, even in the steamy heat. “No,” I muttered, sliding clean hands over my hair, slicking it back out of my eyes. With a will strengthened by years of hard practice and use, I shoved the dream away, boxed it up, and let my mind drift on to other things.

I was rinsing the conditioner out of my hair, only half paying attention to the thoughts that came and went, tossing just below the surface of my conscious mind, when I heard it. Low and soft, gaining volume and clarity as I paid attention to it. A cello. I was hearing cello music, and god help me, I knew the song. The prelude to Bach’s Cello Suite Number 1 in G Major.

Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised. That little melody was a leftover from a tricky bit of spellcasting I’d done back in the fall, a spell that had taken from one man the psychotic half of his personality. I had split out an assassin named Edward from his cover, a bounty hunter named Ted Forrester, plucked him out whole and wrapped him tight and safe. The plan was to undo everything, to return things to their proper place and order, but something had gone wrong.

Ever since that night, from time to time though less frequently of late, I heard that song. That cello. That melody. It looped on itself, the end merely a coda sending the cellist back to the beginning. It was, it seemed, something central to Edward’s personality, to the killer, the psychopath. And suddenly, I knew where my nightmares were coming from. They weren’t mine, not entirely. They were my dream of sex, Edward’s dream of death, melded together to form something repugnant and repellant.

And that meant that I had retained more than the song. I had retained something of Edward himself. Itself. 

The melody returned to the beginning. I squeezed my eyes shut, tried to stop the sound, but couldn’t. “No,” I muttered, as I had before. “Shut up.” It didn’t. Implacable, relentless, unremitting, it played on and on. If anything, it seemed to grow louder and sharper until I thought I could even hear the faint scratch of bow on strings beneath the tones produced.

Any other time, with any other associations, I might have liked the piece. But it just would not stop, the song, Edward, circling around in my head. If I could have excised that part of my brain and tossed it in the trash, I would have, but I couldn’t. I realized I was shivering, the water was freezing cold. My knuckles were bloody. I had been pounding them against the tile. How long had it been?

Someone touched my bare shoulder. I didn’t scream. I just moved. Reflexes I didn’t possess translated into patterns I didn’t know. The flat of my hand flashed out, smashing the edge of my palm into the man’s throat. He stumbled back, choking and grabbing his crushed windpipe. I didn’t stop, but followed him back, landing a kick in his crotch, then an upward slam of the heel of my hand into his nose. He wasn’t down, so I didn’t stop hitting him. Closed-fist backhand, right cross, left hook, side thrust kick to the solar plexus. He was one tough son of a bitch, I gave him that. He finally went down, but I didn’t like that it had taken so much to put him there, so I gave him a kick in the ribs that lifted him off the ground.

Something behind me moved. I whirled, cursing myself for having no weapons handy. That didn’t seem right, somehow. I should have had a gun, a knife, a garrote, something. More people flooded into the bedroom, where my assailant and I had ended up.

“Just grab her!” a man yelled. “Fuck, he’s losing it. Sam!”

“No!” someone countermanded. “Let him shift, it’ll help him heal.”

I went down under a pile of bodies, pinned by throat and wrist and ankles. I heard a ripping sound, something that sounded wet and sucking, and knew it for a were shedding his skin. Snarls and growls mingled with the yelling. Naked and wet, and I flung my weight to one side while twisting like an eel, and slipped one wrist free.

“God dammit!” I heard someone say. Then I saw a fist heading toward my jaw, and I knew that it was over even before the blow landed.

And that’s how I came to wake up, tied to my bed, with a mild concussion and three broken (though nicely taped) fingers, guarded by four suspicious werewolves. Most of my mornings are not that adventurous.

The door to the bedroom opened, and Jacob strode in. Jacob always strides. He’s never walked anywhere a day in his life. Part of that is his size; he’s around 6’4”, broad in the chest and shoulders, well-muscled. The rest of it is just him. He goes around like there’s a list in his head titled Shit I Have To Take Care Of Because No One Else Has The Balls. Evidently, today I was on the list. I try to stay off the list. It’s not a good list.

I also didn’t like being tied to a bed when Jacob was in the room. It might remind him of ideas he already had. I wasn’t sure what to say to him. I mean, “Hi Jacob, sorry I had a psychotic break and beat the crap out of Sam” didn’t really seem quite the thing. 

A jerk of his head sent the other four out of the room. He folded his arms, and I tried not to squirm. I mean, seriously, if anything was worse than being tied to a bed in front of Jacob, it would be writhing about while tied to a bed in front of Jacob. “Talk,” he said, one terse syllable.

A summary, a summary, what to do about a summary. I had never explained to the wolves what had happened between Ted and I. It had felt too personal, and it didn’t seem to be anyone else’s business. This was the first time something had actually happened outside of my own head, so it hadn’t really come up before.

“I can’t explain,” I said. “I need you to trust me, and I need to leave town for awhile.”

“Bullshit,” he said. “Try again.”

I shook my head. “I really can’t explain. I can fix this...” At least, I thought I could. “But I need some distance.”

He scowled, an expression common enough on his face that it had worn grooves into his skin. He waited before asking his next question, and it came out reluctantly. “This isn’t just you trying to get out of our deal a month early?”

Well, it was a fair question I guess. Jacob had successfully bargained for seven months of my efforts as pack vargamor. My tour of duty was done in May, and no way was I planning to re-up. “It’s not,” I said. “But this is now officially out of control, and I can’t rein it in. I need help, help you and the pack can’t give me.”

“Who can?” he asked.

“Ted Forrester.”

His scowl dissolved into a grimace. “Ah hell, Rachel.”

“He owes me,” I said.

Jacob scrubbed a hand through his hair. “I don’t like him,” he said flatly. “I didn’t like him the first time I met him, and I sure as hell didn’t like him the second time. Whenever he’s around, the whole pot turns to shit. I’m sorry I ever sent him in your direction.”

I had almost forgotten that Jacob had been the one to point Ted at me. Ted had been looking for a skilled witch. Jacob had known Ted would freak me out, and wanted to punish me for resisting his efforts to bring me into the pack as vargamor. So he had given Ted my address and wished us both well.

“Well, you did, and things have worked out the way they have. And now I need him to pay me back. And I need you to trust me.”

Jacob may not have liked Ted, but he knew I was trustworthy. He didn’t like it, but as he took the last two steps toward the bed and freed my wrists, he said, “Fine. I need you back by Spring Rite, and bet your ass we’ll be adding to the end of your time the days you take off.”

I sat up slowly, pulling the blankets with me. “Fine,” I agreed. It was fair, though it would have been nice to get out of it early.

He looked down at me. The morning light was filtered through the shades, but still caught sparks in his blue eyes, revealed his hair for deep chestnut and not the black it could look in dimmer circumstances. He was wearing a t-shirt, something he never did so he must have bolted out of his apartment. Black crinkly hairs poked out over the soft neckline. His jeans were a trifle loose, one pocket flashing white where it was partially inside-out, and I realized he was barefoot.

Jacob didn’t move away during my head-to-toe inspection of him. “Rachel,” he said, soft and low.

Abruptly, I rolled off the far side of the bed, dragging the blanket along. “I better get dressed,” I said, looking at the window.

He didn’t speak, didn’t move for a minute. He didn’t even curse, which was unusual for him. “Sooner or later,” he growled, “you’re going to have to tell me why you’re still saying no.”

“Sooner or later,” I agreed. Sometimes even I forgot. Sometimes I thought I was just saying no because I didn’t like giving in to temptation, or because it was a habit. Sooner or later, I’d have to find out myself why I was really still saying no.

He left the room and closed the door behind him. I reached for the phone. Ted’s business card was in the drawer in the bedside table. It was sparse on information, but it had his name and a phone number. The number rang four times, cut off into silence, then a beep. It took me a minute to realize a machine with no outgoing message had picked up. “It’s Rachel,” I said, feeling stupid. “I need help.”

I wasn’t sure I could try to explain. I wasn’t sure I should, not to a machine. After another moment of silence, I hung up and stared at the phone. I sighed and got up to get dressed. “I really hope I’m not screwing up again.”


	2. Chapter 2

Ted called back just after noon. I have a day job; I run an herb store located across the street from my apartment, sandwiched between a Pakistani grocery store and a pawn shop. I hadn’t left either my home or work number, but I had a blithe certitude that Ted could find the number if he wanted it. He’d found trickier information.

“Secret Garden,” I said into the handset.

“Rachel.”

Ted and I hadn’t parted on bad terms. I had helped save his life, for Pete’s sake. But there’s something about him that still has the power to scare the bejeezus out of me. My skin prickled, and he’d only said one word. It didn’t hold any menace, no inquisitiveness, nothing. It was Ted: flat, impersonal, cold. I squashed an absurd urge to ask him about the weather where he was. 

“Hi.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I need to see you.”

“I can’t get away right now.”

“Can I come there?”

“Rachel, what’s going on?”

I considered. “This morning, I couldn’t get the Prelude out of my head, and I almost killed a werewolf with my bare hands.”

“How?”

“Crushed his larynx, broke his nose, his jaw, and three of his ribs in under one minute flat. Also broke a couple of my fingers. I didn’t know bones were so hard.”

He was silent for so long, I started to wonder if he’d hung up. “Why do you think I can help you?”

I blinked, stunned. He knew, he knew damned good and well what was in my head. Then I got mad. It doesn’t happen often. “Look, you little buzz cut shit-head, it took two of us to do this particular tango and whatever’s broken with me was broken with you first, not to mention the fact that I pulled your narrow ass out of the fire. You owe me, you owe me twice, and you owe me big.” I could be brave. He was three thousand miles away.

“I see close association with the werewolves has done a lot to improve your vocabulary.” He was amused. I often amused him. It was just one of his many unattractive character traits. “Meet me in St. Louis.”

At first, I thought he was being facetious. “Meet you at the fair?” I asked.

He ignored my sally, or perhaps he just wasn’t a fan of Judy Garland musicals. “I’ll pick you up at the airport. Take the 9:15 out of Kennedy.”

I scrambled to catch up. “Uh... when?”

“Tonight,” he said as if it were perfectly obvious. Then he hung up.

 

I checked ticket prices first, then called Jacob next. Not being independently wealthy, I couldn’t afford a last-minute ticket from New York to St. Louis. And since the airlines didn’t give hardship fares for things like schizophrenia, I was stuck. A quick call to one of the pack assured me of someone to watch the store for the afternoon. The pack never lacks for unemployed people, most of whom can run a retail business. Another perk of being pack vargamor; sometimes I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to give it up.

I met Jacob at his condo. Jacob’s condo is in the Upper West Side and is nice, in that it’s palatial. He has a view of the park. He doesn’t have a day job. Being the alpha of a pack the size of this one was a full-time job, so all the pack chipped in to pay the mortgage and fees. There’s a sliding scale based on your monthly income. Taxes, basically. You give to the pack, the pack gives back. The entire pack also had access. Drove the doorman nuts.

I spotted Devan’s limo driver in the downstairs lounge. The driver wasn’t a were, but everyone knew Devan was. He was the public face of the pack, and everyone assumed he was the alpha. If push came to shove, Devan could probably have bought the condo outright, out of his own pocket. He had one only slightly less grand about a block away. I wasn’t sure if his being here was due to coincidence or not, but it didn’t seem wise to assume much at this point.

The elevator deposited me into the foyer. “Back here!” Jacob hollered. 

I followed the echoes to the den, and found the entire upper echelon of the pack waiting for me. Jacob sat in the largest of the leather wing chairs, Katherine perched on one arm of the chair. The settee held Devan and Matt. Matt was the current Freki, only because someone had to be. No one with a brain was going to challenge Jacob right now. The only ones I knew who had the power were Devan or Kincaid. 

The latter was lingering near one of the tall windows. Kincaid was Skoll to Devan’s Hati, together they were Jacob’s bodyguards. Alec was there as well, though he was new to the upper levels of the power structure in the pack, and was probably the lowest-ranked person there. He milled about, status-wise, somewhere above the general pack but below Matt. Since Katherine was there, Chelsea was, and she and Alec were holding a quiet debate on the merits of starting the fire laid in the fireplace. 

Chelsea really didn’t like me. She was Katherine’s nominal bodyguard. Due to a small miscalculation on my part back when Jacob and I were still negotiating over the terms of my becoming pack vargamor, I had sort of accidentally forced her to shift. While she was protecting Katherine. During the distraction, a horde of vampires had taken the lupa. Then there was torture and screaming and a gunfight, and it just wasn’t pretty. Chelsea blamed me, solidly, handing out not even the smallest nugget of guilt to anyone else. All me. 

And Ryan was there. Ryan was the only were I’d give even odds to if he went up against Ted. They share something, though I couldn’t adequately name it. More than just the love of the kill. Maybe it was that they both saw everyone they met as potential prey. Ryan doesn’t have Ted’s utter blankness, though. Even when he’s just staring at you, you know he’s smiling and picturing your various body parts laid out in alphabetical order. He lived like his entire life was killing people interspersed with long periods of waiting-to-kill-people. 

He was what amounted to the pack’s assassin, the Bolverk. He did the dirty work that not even the Hati and Skoll wanted any part of. It kept everybody as happy as they were going to get: Jacob could keep Ryan on a leash, Ryan occasionally got to hurt people, and the entire pack behaved because no one, even those who weren’t afraid of Jacob, wanted a visit from Ryan.

Once upon a time, I wouldn’t have been able to get this close to this many powerful shifters without having a complete nervous breakdown. The energy they radiated would have sent me reeling. Now, however, I was vargamor. That meant this energy was my energy, as much as the tiny tidbits I carried around naturally. It flowed into me, through me, and out of me, a complete circuit that left me unharmed and just a little high.

Jacob was scowling at me. “Well, sit the fuck down or something.”

I realized I was hovering in the doorway and walked into the room, plopping myself down on the settee on the other side of Devan, not so incidentally putting both him and Matt between me and Ryan. I’d had occasion to touch Ryan’s energy before, usually at one of the pack’s lupanar, and it always felt like he was sliding his hands under my skirt. Yeuch. 

Devan just scooted down a bit to make room for me. Nice of him. In other situations, it could be seen as a dominance play – me making him move so I could sit where I chose – but Devan knew my aversion to Ryan. He, of all the pack, had bent over backwards to see that I was comfortable, never wanted for anything. It would have been more flattering if I hadn’t been aware he was only doing it so I wouldn’t want to leave the pack in May.

They were all staring at me, so I kicked things off. “Ted agreed to help, but he wants me in St. Louis tonight. There’s a 9:15 flight leaving JFK, going direct. I already spoke with Anne-Marie. She and Andy can hold down the fort at the store.”

“How long will you be gone?” Katherine asked.

“I don’t know,” I confessed. “It could be a day, or a week, or a month. I’m... I’m not entirely certain how to fix what’s wrong.”

“What is wrong?” Kincaid wanted to know.

“It’s not easy to explain. Some of it, I can’t explain. They’re secrets, and not my secrets to give away. I guess... the best I can say is that it has to do with that spell that went wonky back when you helped me save Ted from Gideon’s vampires.”

Jacob rested one of his hands on Katherine’s thigh. He did it without looking at her, and she didn’t look away from me. It was an automatic offer of comfort. My stomach twisted a little, and I looked up at her face with a little grimace of apology. She really hadn’t fared terribly well during all that. Her return smile was faint but reassuring. Not a woman for holding grudges, Katherine.

“So you beat up Sam.” That was Ryan’s quiet contribution, tinged with hidden laughter.

Bodies shifted all across the room, little adjustments that signaled a lot of discomfort.

“I didn’t mean to,” I said. “I was in the shower. I didn’t hear him. He grabbed my shoulder and then...” I shrugged.

“You were in the shower for two hours,” Jacob said. “He didn’t want to go near you. You’re lucky he called someone. He didn’t go in there until he let us in the apartment.”

Well, that explained how they’d gotten there in time. “Sam’s all right, though, isn’t he?”

“Yes,” Devan said. “But...”

But? I looked around, and saw a sea of averted eyes, all but Ryan and Kincaid. This wasn’t good. “But what?”

Ryan answered, of course. “But now you’re dominant to Sam.”

“Uh... I’m vargamor. Doesn’t that put me dominant to most of the pack?”

Chelsea growled, her eyes paling to soft amber. “Fuck no,” she said. Did I mention that she doesn’t like me?

“Your position as vargamor puts you inside the pack structure, but not inside the pack,” Devan explained. “It’s unusual for a vargamor to make a dominance challenge. If you were just someone on the street who’d beaten Sam, we’d take retribution. But this is an awkward situation.”

Kincaid picked up the thread. “In the eyes of pack law, you now have some kind of place inside the pack itself. Sam’s low-ranked, being new, but you’re still above him.”

“But... I’m not a were.”

“Nevertheless.”

I stared at Jacob. Jacob stared back. “Fix it!” I yelled at him.

He shrugged, an interesting little ripple of muscle. “Nothing I can do about it. You want it fixed, there’s pretty much only one way.”

“If you tell me I have to let Sam beat the crap out of me...”

“No, that’d just put you lower in rank than him. But still ranked. You have to leave the pack.”

“I’m not IN the pack!” I shouted.

“Oh calm the hell down already,” Kincaid snorted. “It’s no big deal. You were going to do it anyway in a month. There’s a ceremony, some arm waving, everyone says some shit, then you go home.”

“It’s not quite that simple,” Katherine said, her tone somehow managing to brush the rough edges off of Kincaid’s. It was a talent she had, being able to soothe everyone just by being there. It was so easy to think of her as entirely peaceful and placid that I sometimes forgot I had seen her fight. “It’s more of an outcasting. Normally when someone of low stature leaves the pack, they just ask permission from the alpha and they go. Someone like you, there’s a real bond that has to be broken.”

Broken. That didn’t sound nice. “Okay. So do we do it now?”

“No,” Jacob said, like an anvil dropping. “When you’re gone, you’re gone. No coming back, no more vargamor, and I own your ass for another month.”

My eyes narrowed. “You own my services as vargamor, Ulfric,” I shot back. “And not one damned thing more.”

Katherine slid aside like a ripple of silk, and Jacob got to his feet. “You do not want to be giving me attitude right now, Rachel,” he said, his voice dropping by an octave. “You took rank in my pack. I should smack you down just to make sure you know your fucking place.”

Power spat and sparkled all around me, all the wolves reacting to the building challenge in the air. I gritted my teeth and tried to channel the extra sizzle back out of me, tried not to drink it in and revel in it, tried not to hear classical cello music. “Isn’t it a little beneath the alpha’s dignity to slap around a low-ranked pack member?” I asked, throat tight.

Katherine’s hand brushed the back of Jacob’s neck, caressed his spine. No one else would have come near him. If it had been Devan or Kincaid, he’d have taken it as a challenge, as them attempting to supplant his will with theirs. But it was Katherine, his lupa, his partner and lover, and the splintering energy sloughed off him like water. Jacob closed his blue eyes, sank into some kind of communication with Katherine that I could sense but not understand. He heaved a sigh, and looked at me again, anger abated.

I looked away first. I really wasn’t challenging him. 

Katherine stepped in front of me. “Let’s go talk,” she said.

“Have we decided anything?” Devan asked.

“Of course,” Katherine said, vaguely surprised. “She’ll go because she needs help and this is the way to get it. Devan, see to the tickets. She’ll be home in time for the Rite, and after that we’ll discuss her status in the pack again.” 

See, that’s a lupa. I went with her, docile as anyone else would be when Katherine wanted something from them.

I expected her to take me to the conservatory. It was “her” room, as much as any of them were in this place. Walls of windows and a forest of plants, it was the most peaceful place I’d ever been short of my personal workspace in the forests of upstate. But she took me instead into the gym. Uh oh.

Free weights waited against one wall, a full length mirror covered another. A mat was there for wrestling practice, and a treadmill faced the windows. The gym was about the same size as my apartment. Money may not be able to buy happiness, but it can get you one hell of a condo.

I stepped into the middle of the room and turned, waiting to see if I was going to get hurt. Katherine didn’t need to hurt people up to get them to toe the line, but she was quite capable of it.

“I’m sorry, Rachel.”

Huh? I blinked at her.

“I mean it. I’m sorry. I tried to warn you, but I guess you can’t instruct people how to arrange their feelings.”

“Uh... well... thanks for warning me, I guess. What are we talking about, again?”

“Jacob,” she said.

“What about him?”

“Back in October, I tried to tell you not to fall in love with him.”

“I’m not in lo—”

“Give it up, Rachel. Everyone knows it. You get jealous whenever he and I touch or interact on any level that’s not professional. It knots your insides up.”

I still wasn’t ready to go so far as to say I was in love with Jacob. “Even if that were true, and I’m not saying it is, shouldn’t you be pissed off?”

She grinned a bit. “I would be, if I were worried about my position. Not to be insulting here, but there’s no way you could be to Jacob everything I am. He and I are...” She fumbled for the vocabulary while I got insulted. “We’re a pair. A perfectly matched set. We know each other’s thoughts and moods, when we’re alone we don’t even bother to speak to communicate. I’m utterly his in every way that matters, and he’s completely mine.”

“And yet, he still wants me.” I sounded catty and knew it, but I couldn’t seem to change my tone. My arms folded protectively over my chest.

“Oh yes,” she nodded, agreeable. “You’re something new to him. He shares energy with you in a way even I can’t duplicate. You manage to stand up to him without ever quite challenging him. You tell him no. He doesn’t hear that a lot. And, too, there’s something still human about you, something he and I lost a long time ago.”

“So that just means you can’t be to him what I can be.” I shook my head rapidly. “I’m not saying I want to take him from you, Katherine. I don’t, I swear I don’t. I just don’t understand why it doesn’t piss you off when...”

“When it pisses you off that he’s with me?” she asked.

Fuck. Well, she had me there. I nodded, once, and looked at the floor a lot.

“Well, partly it’s because I don’t love him.”

“C’mon, Katherine...”

“I don’t. Not that way, not the get-married-have-puppies kind of love. Let me try it this way. I don’t get upset because what he wants from you isn’t important. He likes you, he wants you, he may even cherish you on some level, but...” She took a pause, then tried again. “Someone can only be afraid if they’re not sure of what they have. Someone who lives in a rickety shack will be afraid whenever the wind blows because they’re not sure the walls will stay up. No one in Buckingham Palace was ever worried the roof would cave in during a thunderstorm.”

Confidence. It didn’t matter what Jacob had with me because what he had with her was permanent, stronger. I didn’t reply.

“I’m sorry, Rachel. I had hoped that maybe it wouldn’t come to this, but now that you’ve got pack status, people are going to wonder. I don’t so much care what they think, I can handle them.”

“But you didn’t want me getting ideas you might have to beat out of me.”

“Yeah,” she said when I didn’t look up. “I didn’t want you getting ideas I might have to beat out of you. You know,” she continued after a long silence, “I think you knew all this on some level. That’s why you won’t sleep with him.”

Now that she had said it, I could see she was right. Sex with Jacob would be like putting some kind of final seal on how I felt for him. While I firmly believe in the benefits of good sex, and have been known to have a one-night stand or two in my time, I couldn’t have sex with someone I cared about and not have it be a strengthening thing, something that would bring us closer. One more tie that would bind. “God,” I said. “I feel like such an idiot.”

“I get that,” she said. “That’s why I thought we should do this now. You’re getting on a plane tonight, so you’ll get some physical space while you sort this all out. Seriously, even if this only takes you a day or two? Maybe stay out there a few extra days. Get yourself settled before you come back.”

“I sometimes wish you weren’t so nice,” I sighed. “But yeah, that sounds like a good idea. I think I’ll take you up on it.”

“We won’t tell Jacob. If he questions it when you get back, it was my idea. I’ll keep him in line.”

I had to smile a little at that. “Do you always manipulate him like this?”

“No. Sometimes I just smack him around.”

It wasn’t much, but it was enough to let me walk out of the gym with a smidgen of control back. When we got back to the den, there was an argument going on. I think I was the only one close enough to hear Katherine’s soft sigh.

“I’ll go,” Ryan was saying.

“No!” yelled Kincaid, Devan, and Jacob as one. That kind of emphasis can squish a person.

“Go where?” I piped up.

“With you,” Devan said.

“No one’s coming with me.”

“Shut up, Rachel,” Kincaid snarled.

“Bite me, Kincaid.” The rejoinder was automatic. Kincaid was a bristly guy who was famous for biting people’s heads off. Not literally. He just had a temper. Normally, you could snap back without retribution. It was just the way to communicate with Kincaid. Something had changed, however.

Kincaid took three rapid steps toward me, prevented only when Katherine leaned a shoulder in my direction. I understood the gesture, and instantly ducked my head behind it, brushing my cheek along her arm as I did. Katherine, as a dominant in the pack, offered me her protection. I took it. Kincaid couldn’t come after me without going through Katherine, and he couldn’t do it. Not only did he respect her too much to do it, but she matched him in raw power. They’d rip each other apart.

She murmured to me, “Be careful. Remember, you have pack status now. All kinds of things can be interpreted as a challenge.”

Hmm. I’d forgotten, or maybe just never bothered to dwell on the implications. I peeked out from behind her. Kincaid hadn’t gotten any closer, but he hadn’t moved away, either. The muscles in his jaw were twitching. He was just aching to take someone apart, and if I was standing close enough, I’d do. I looked away from his eyes. If I challenged him directly, Katherine wouldn’t be permitted to interfere.

“Someone’s going with you,” Jacob said, returning us to the topic at hand.

“Why?” I asked.

“In the first place, have you forgotten what you’re like without our energy to draw from? You’ll be weak as a kitten.”

“Ted’s not a threat.”

“In the second place, you’ll be in another pack’s territory. As our pack’s vargamor, you have obligations. You’ll have to go see their ulfric and lupa, have to make some restitution for invading their territory. And I’m not sending you into that alone.”

Really? “Well then it shouldn’t be Ryan.”

Jacob snorted. “No shit. I don’t dare send Devan or Kincaid, either. They belong here. Sending one of my enforcers with you looks bad on a lot of levels.”

That’s when I got help from a rather unexpected corner. Alec spoke up. “Then it should be me.”

The room got quiet. I think everyone had forgotten he was there. He explained into the silence, “I’m not technically one of the higher ranked pack leaders, but I’m close. Close enough not to insult them or to pose a threat. And I don’t give Rachel the creeps the way some of you do. She’ll be less likely to ditch me.”

“No fucking way, Jacob,” Kincaid protested. “That pack is so fucked up, it makes the Manson family look like the god damned Cleavers. And Alec’s a pussy. They won’t walk out of there.”

Uh... Maybe I didn’t want to go to Saint Louis. “What the hell goes on in Saint Louis?”

“Lots of things, if rumors hold true,” Devan answered me while Jacob and Kincaid had a stare-down. “Their lupa may or may not actually be lupa, but doesn’t seem to be a werewolf at all and, according to the papers, is an animator. The ulfric apparently took power recently, but is trying to instate a democracy so half the pack is looking for a way to kill him. Only he’s supposed to be insanely powerful, and his lupa is backing him up so no one dares. Their lupa is supposedly also fucking the Master of the City, and the ulfric may or may not be doing him, too.”

“Holy shit,” I said.

“Yeah, that about sums it up. Plus you add in the fact that the old ulfric and lupa were sadistic perverts whose idea of fun was making snuff films starring their own pack members...” He shrugged.

I looked at Jacob, horrified. He was harsh and strict and ran a tight ship, but he’d throw himself in front of a moving train if he thought it’d save his pack any pain. And Katherine was the surrogate mother to the pack. Everyone came to her with all their problems, their little heartaches and their big disagreements. They were... well, they were a pack. I couldn’t fathom things being run differently.

Jacob looked grim. “Kincaid’s right,” he said. “I’m not sending my vargamor into that hellhole without some muscle to back her up.”

“I said I’ll go,” Alec said again.

“It’s not that we don’t appreciate the offer, Alec,” Katherine began.

He cut her off, by turning to Matt and saying, “I challenge you, Matthew. I want the position of Freki.”

“Now?!” Jacob snapped. “We don’t have time for this now.”

“It’s his right,” Katherine sighed.

Matt rose from the settee. He smiled slightly, and the contest began. 

It was fairly ritualized. I’d seen enough challenges even in the six months I’d been with the pack to know what would happen. First, they’d flex their metaphysical muscles at each other, comparing magical dick sizes. If one proved significantly more powerful than the other, sometimes that would end a challenge. If that didn’t do it, they’d move on to non-lethal combat, like wolves in the wild. Lots of wrestling, not much claw and fang. If they still couldn’t decide among themselves who was top wolf, then things would get bloody.

Jacob had backed down half a dozen challengers when he went Fenrir and wanted to challenge for Ulfric. All he had to do was stand there and spew around his energy, and people dove for cover. In the pack, the only ones I knew who could rival his level of power were Kincaid and Katherine. Kincaid didn’t have Jacob’s iron control, and Katherine was his lupa. Devan was close to Jacob and Kincaid, but not quite at their stratum. Matt was noticeably more powerful than most others in the pack, but he wasn’t in the same class as the others.

And Alec, as far as I knew, couldn’t even match Matt. He had once informed me that he could take out Chelsea, a fact Chelsea had disputed, but it had never come to blows between them. He didn’t want the rank, he was content to stay where he was. Only now, it occurred to me that he had positioned himself the same way a top jockey would; far enough back so he didn’t wear himself out at the beginning of the race, but within reach of first place so he could make his move.

And then he made it.

It was like being in a dark room when someone suddenly switched on the halogen lights. Like walking in the desert and being caught in a flash-hurricane. For a minute, all you can do is gasp, duck, and think, “Whoa”. I couldn’t catch my breath, and I felt Katherine catch me as I staggered.

Where the hell had he been hiding it? I’d ridden the energy of the entire pack during the lupanar, I had touched all of them, I thought I knew them all. How had he hidden it?

Evidently, everyone else in the room was wondering the same thing. When I cleared my metaphysical eyes of the dazzle, they were all gaping. Even Jacob, though as I watched him, his expression shifted from astonishment to confusion to speculation and then to suspicion. Alec had suddenly become a player. Even I couldn’t weigh the energies evenly enough to decide if he did or didn’t outdo Devan. I was pretty sure Jacob still had him beat in raw power. Pretty sure.

Alec hadn’t moved. Matt was slack-jawed, and Alec said quietly, “Yield, Matt.” We all watched as Matt slowly dropped to his knees and bent his head back, baring his throat. Alec stepped forward and touched him on the shoulder. Submission and acceptance. That was all. Just like that, Alec was now Jacob’s second. Beta. Freki.

“I think I should go with Rachel,” he said. 

This time, no one argued.


	3. Chapter 3

I went home to get packed and to stop by the store. Anne-Marie and Andy were fine with running the store for awhile. I made sure they had keys to my apartment, and told them they were welcome to help themselves to the food. The pack had funds to keep them paid; the pack supported its members as best it could, as long as the members were doing things to benefit the pack. They had my cell phone number, and I left them in the store.

At the apartment, the first things I packed were magical supplies. I wasn’t sure what I’d need, because I didn’t yet know how I was going to fix things. I was running on the assumption that something of Edward’s personality had gotten left behind, but that didn’t explain the fighting moves. I hoped some times spent studying Ted at close range would help me figure it out.

I knew I’d never get my athame on a plane; the airlines really don’t even like transporting magical items let alone magical knives, but there was nothing in my stuff to make the curse detectors go off so only the athame would have to stay behind. I packed a selection of the more rare crystals and stones in my collection, a bundle of white leather I used for a travel altar, and carefully wrapped a long white swan feather in silk before stowing it in the silk-lined bag that held everything else. If I needed more materials, I could buy them in Saint Louis.

I didn’t know how to pack for the weather there, so I packed an assortment of sweaters and shirts, sticking with three pairs of jeans in the bag and the pair I was wearing. God bless denim. Toiletries and sleepwear took up the last of the space in the suitcase, and I was ready to go. 

Alec was picking me up, and I went outside to wait for him. It was only April, but we were getting a summer preview. The day had been unseasonably warm, and the night was downright mild. I couldn’t see the stars, of course, but it was still a pretty night and I was too edgy to wait in the apartment. I sat on the stairs, suitcase wedged between my body and the stair rail, my magical bag over my knees. My apartment was over a bakery run by a very sweet older Jewish couple, and though it was closed now, the air still bore traceries of yeasty warmth and sweet powdered sugar. I inhaled and savored the scent, beginning to feel normal for the first time that day.

Then my skin began to crawl. My stomach clenched, as if the sweet smells had become tainted with sewage, and before he spoke, I knew he was there. A slow, oily streak of tainted death magic, he made the night squirm around him in discomfort, unnatural and antithetical. A vampire.

“Leaving town so soon? You have a whole month before you have to find a hole and pull it in after you.”

The euro-trash accent was enough for me to place the voice. Cristan, vampire flunky. To be fair, he was someone important in the vampire side of things, but I didn’t know anything about their structure, really. I just knew that he stood near the Master of the City, and that made him a problem.

I had hoped that the vampires would get over their grudge, but it seemed they were still pissed at me for helping Ted get away from them. Cristan more than most, since he had bitten Ted and expected to have control over him. Then my holy water and I had intervened, and Ted had walked away.

I didn’t look over at him, didn’t want to risk eye contact. When I stood with the pack, I could manage to look a vampire in the eyes and not go under. But I was alone, I was outside any hope of getting to shelter, and the only thing between me and an exsanguination was the implicit protection of the pack and their retribution.

“Just a quick vacation, Cristan,” I said, looking away from him as if checking the street for an approaching car. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

He chuckled, low and soft. He had this ability, this power, and I didn’t understand it. Even while my magical senses were jumping up and down, screaming that a rotting corpse was talking to me, he could turn me on. It was like he had a direct pipeline to the pleasure centers of the brain. If I didn’t keep up my tightest shields around him, he could play me like a fiddle. It was confusing to say the least, being aroused by something that repulsed me. I tightened them before that velvet sound could do more than make my skin tingle. “I wasn’t decrying the choice,” he said. “It’s what I would do, were I you. We’re just biding our time, you know.”

“Really,” I said, trying for mild ennui with my tone. “You’d think vampires would have better things to do. And it doesn’t seem terribly clever to warn me. Maybe I’ll decide to stay with the pack. Then where would you be?”

I didn’t see him move. You couldn’t, not the old ones, not when they didn’t want you to. One minute he was on my left out of sight, the next minute he was right in front of me. Our eyes met. Tricksy vampireses. My brains went poof. He brushed aside my shields like thin cobwebs, and took my soul.

“Come to me, Rachel,” he murmured.

I stood and walked down the steps to him, dumping my bag in the process and not caring. I craved him instantly, totally, all I could do was shake and pray he’d touch me. My brain wailed a protest, knew him for the undead thing he was, but body burned for him. His smile curved up, revealing white fangs. He lifted a hand and stroked my chin, the faintest of pressure making me roll my head to one side. I exhaled, long and slow, and closed my eyes.

A flood of searing heat poured into me. With a gasp, I reclaimed myself and pitched Cristan out of my head. He stumbled back with the force of it, cursing with thwarted hunger.

“Hey Rachel.” Alec had arrived, was strolling up the sidewalk toward us from his parked car. “Cristan. You weren’t trying to feed from my vargamor, were you?”

“You won’t always be around, wolf,” Cristan snarled. “We will have her. The insult will be repaid.”

Alec got in Cristan’s face, went nose to nose with the vampire. “Get it through your dead skull, vampire,” he said, matching snarl for snarl. “We will always be around. Stop fucking with her.”

They faced off. Knowing what I knew now about Alec’s power, I was even more wary of Cristan since he didn’t back off. If Alec had been alone, or if I had, this might have ended badly. But we were together, and we were pack.

I bound up some of Alec’s energies in a pattern for which my own power was insufficient, making a braided twist of intent that stroked Cristan lightly. Whatever magic kept him in this semblance of life was the antithesis of my own life-based power, and the dichotomy sent up sparks. “Go away, Cristan,” I said. “You lost this round.”

He took a step back, poised again, and inclined his head ever so gracefully. “This one, little witch,” he said. “But there will be others.” And he vanished.

I sighed. “Whew,” I said, then smiled at Alec. It was a little shaky, but hey, it was a smile. “Good timing.”

He grinned back. “Always wanted to do the damsel-in-distress rescue. You really shouldn’t have been out here alone, y’know.”

“I honestly wasn’t thinking,” I admitted. “They leave me alone for weeks, and then...”

“Yeah well, vampires tend to take the long view. They’re patient.” He nodded his head at my bags. “That everything?”

“Yeah,” I said, picking up the bag that held my magical equipment. “I travel light.”

We got to the airport discussing little everyday things. In the old pack structure, Alec and I had never really crossed paths much. I liked him though; he had been right about that. He had a way about him, easygoing and relaxed, that was different from most of the other wolves. It was an impression enhanced by his looks; multi-toned blond hair and dark brown eyes gave him a farm boy look. He was tall, but lacking the brawn of some of the others. He was lean and almost lanky, but I had seen him naked and knew he was hard muscled and zero body fat. He had a six-pack that was pure joy to behold. All that and dimples, too. I love dimples.

We checked our bags and got through security. It took longer for us than for some because of the magical stuff I was carrying. The swan feather gave the inspector some pause. Unsurprising. It is an odd sort of artifact. It used to be part of an entire swan skin, but though the rest of the skin was gone, the feather had been sent to me.

By Ted. Funny how many things came back to him.

The plane was a pleasant surprise, though. We had been booked in First Class. I bounced a little on my seat, just to test the softness of course. Alec grinned at me as he adjusted his seat belt and turned down a pre-flight drink from the steward. Flight attendant, sorry.

I flashed a smile back at him. He’d let me have the window seat. “Nice of Devan,” I remarked. “I’d have flown coach.”

“Coach?” Alec said in mock-horror. “That wouldn’t have made a very good impression.”

“Have you ever done this? Gone into another pack’s territory, I mean?”

“Yes, once. Jen and I were sent to Jersey to talk about a pack exchange with the wolves in Trenton.”

Jen was Alec’s sister. They were both wolves, and the whole story was rather sordid. He didn’t talk about it much. “Well, at least one of us knows what to expect. Which of us has the lead?”

“You do,” he said. “It’s your errand we’re on.”

“Even though you’re Freki now.” I softened my smile, then shook my head. “I can’t wrap my brain around it. I know what I saw, what I felt. But even now...” My eyes unfocused as I shifted my vision, a funny sort of not-concentration that let me see into magical realms. “I can’t see it. I wouldn’t have thought it was possible.”

“I’ve had a lot of practice,” he said.

The pilot interrupted our conversation to give us details about our flight that we didn’t really need. I mean, did I care at what altitude we would be flying? Did it change anything I could do in the event of a mid-air collision? But we were polite and pretended to watch the flight attendants do their animatronic arm-waving.

When we were in the air, I continued. “So all this time, you had the power to be a major player in wolf politics.”

“I suppose,” he said, flipping through a magazine he’d picked up in the airport.

“But you didn’t use it. You didn’t even show it.”

“Nope,” he agreed.

Oh, I saw the hints, I just didn’t feel like taking them. If he and I were going into the kind of clusterfuck that Kincaid said was waiting for us in Saint Louis, I wanted to know him a little better. “C’mon, Alec. ‘Fess up.”

He sighed and put the magazine down. “Okay. What do you want to know?”

“Why hide it? Why choose now to reveal it? You could’ve taken Matt any time you wanted.”

I watched him as he folded his hands over his flat stomach, watched the small movements of his jaw as he chewed over how to respond. “I didn’t want it before,” he said. “Jacob, Devan, Kincaid, Katherine... The bunch of them are too tight-knit, too impenetrable. I could either insinuate myself into their ranks and be one of them, or stay outside. And if I was going to stay outside, I didn’t want them to know I could be a threat.”

He was saying something, something else, something more important, but I hadn’t quite grasped it yet. He glanced over at me, saw my frown of confusion, and explained slower.

“If I’m going to be Ulfric, I can’t do it until the power structure breaks up. I was going to stay hidden until something happened to break it up.”

Oh. Oh! “You want to be Ulfric?”

“Yeah, can you sound a little more incredulous when you say that again? Because it wasn’t quite demeaning enough the first time.”

“No, no. I didn’t mean it like that.” But I sort of did. “Hey, take it as a compliment. You were trying to stay under the radar so no one would suspect you. I didn’t.”

He ruffled his magazine at me and went back to reading. I sat and went ‘wow’ a lot as the pilot directed us to look out our windows and see something. It was like taking a car trip with my dad, only at a very high altitude.

The next time the flight attendant came around, I got a Sprite and Alec got coffee. “Why now?” I asked him.

“Because of you.”

“Me?”

“You’re it. You’re the destabilizer.”

I frowned. “Am not. I behave.”

“Y’know why Jacob helped you out against the vamps? He knew it was his big chance to get you to be pack vargamor. You had been standing him off for, what, two years?”

“Something like that,” I agreed, shifting uneasily.

“That kind of thing looks bad for him, Rachel. It looks real bad. There were whispers, and he can’t afford whispers. He could either kill the whisperers, or get you to heel.”

My frown deepened. “Ok, first of all, it worked and I’m vargamor so he should be fine now. And second of all, I am not ‘at heel’, thank you very much.”

He nodded at me. “I know. Everyone knows. You’re still defying him, but you’ve got the integrity to honor your word and your commitment. He wanted you as vargamor, you said no, and everyone knows you’ll be gone at the end of May. He wants you as his lover, and you say no. His original plan was to have you live in the condo, but he’s smart enough to know you’d say no to that. He’s been trying for months to find a way to tie you tightly to the pack, but you won’t be bound. Kincaid wants to kill you. Devan’s trying to buy you. Katherine and Jacob have fights over you. You’re the destabilizer, but if you get killed in Saint Louis, everything will settle down again.”

I sat back, stunned. The implications and applications whirled too quickly for me to follow them. “So Jacob needs me to show the pack that he can make anyone obey. You need me alive as a pry bar to break apart the pack leadership, giving you space to take over.” I smiled slightly, a cynical laugh escaping. “Even you just want to use me for your own ends and your own purposes. And you people wonder why I don’t want to stay with the pack.”

I looked out the window and that was the end of our conversation.

The farther we got from New York, the weirder I was feeling. At first, I put it down to the series of revelations, but eventually I realized that I was losing a base-level awareness of the wolves in New York. It was something I had become accustomed to, something that was comforting in its way. I closed my eyes to better focus on them, felt them slipping away one at a time until the only ones I could sense were Alec next to me, and the tiny fading spark that was Jacob. Then he, too, winked out of my awareness, and I was alone.

Alec stroked my arm, calling me back to the plane. “You ok?” he asked softly. 

But could I trust the concern in his voice? I didn’t answer him, and he sighed, saying, “I know. I miss them too.”

I let it go at that. But I did lean against him.


	4. Chapter 4

Thankfully I had remembered to call Ted and warn him about Alec. He hadn’t been thrilled on the phone, but he seemed to take it in stride. Alec got the bags while I stepped outside to talk to Ted, my one carry-on magical bag slung over my shoulder.

“Get in the van,” Ted said, following his own orders as he climbed into the driver’s side of a white rental van.

Ted was pissed. I wasn’t sure why, but I didn’t think telling him ‘no’ was going to put him in a better mood. “Ooookay,” I said, and slid into the passenger side of the van. “Alec’s getting the bags, he’ll be ri—“

Ted took off, spinning out in the rest of the traffic leaving the airport.

“Hey!” I protested. “You forgot Alec!”

“I didn’t forget anything,” he said. “I’m sure your little dog will be able to find you. Or you’ll be able to find him. You’re the witch, right?”

Well, yeah, he was right. Alec was the only member of my pack in the city, the only one to whom I was bound. I could find him, generally. But was that really the point? “What the fuck’s going on?”

“Put your fucking seatbelt on. Wouldn’t want you to die before I get the chance to kill you.”

Yikes. Now, I didn’t really think he was going to kill me. Even if he had picked me up in a white cargo van, not a passenger car. Even if he was pissed. If he’d wanted me dead, I’d already be dead. I still didn’t take my eyes off him the entire trip. It wasn’t nearly long enough for my peace of mind, but somehow, it was really far too long to be locked in a moving vehicle with a ticked-off assassin.

Ted stopped the van in the middle of an industrial complex. He opened his door and stepped out of the van. “Get out.” His door slammed behind him.

I got out of the van, moving slowly. The entire place reeked of bad movies and dead bodies and cement shoes. I half-expected to hear a soundtrack playing in the deep night. Something techno if this were an action movie, or maybe Harlem Nocturne if it were a gumshoe.

When I got inside the warehouse, I saw six or seven thick mats rolled out in the middle of the empty space. This wasn’t making me any less confused. I looked for Ted and found him folding his shirt. He had on a tank top beneath it, so at least he wasn’t stripping for me. That would have been all I needed to send me right back to the van.

“What the hell are you doing?” I asked.

He walked to the center of the mats and gestured me over. 

“Am I going to get beaten up?”

“You said you took down a werewolf in under one minute with your bare hands,” he said. “I want to see how you did it.”

I took a step or two closer, but had no intentions of getting on those mats. “No, see, I didn’t do anything. Whatever’s loose in my head did it. If he hadn’t been a were, he’d be dead.”

“Come here.”

“No.”

“Get on the fucking mats, Rachel.”

I stepped back. “No. Fuck this. Forget it, I’m out of here.” I pivoted and walked toward the door in rapid strides.

That’s when I got shot.

I whirled around, left hand grabbing my right bicep. I let go again instantly, hissed, then put my hand back. I couldn’t decide which way hurt more. Ted stood exactly where I’d left him, but now he had a gun aimed at me.

Ted doesn’t miss. If I had been shot in the arm, it was because Ted had been trying to shoot me in the arm.

His glacial blue eyes met mine over the length of his arm and that black barrel. “What’s the matter, Rachel? Need a little more incentive? Look down.”

My eyes flicked down to the floor. A portable CD player was there, paused, a disc visibly spinning through the clear plastic top. I knew what it was, abruptly, and I knew what Ted was doing. “Jesus,” I said, lifting my head to stare at him. “You’re trying to bring it on. You want me to let it loose.”

His thumb cocked the gun, and in case you’re wondering yes it’s a very scary sound. “You took something from me. I want to know what it is I’ve lost.”

The epiphany struck: I had made a very, very big mistake coming here.

“Push play.”

Stalling for time, I did as he asked, slowly. No sudden moves. As expected, cello music, the Prelude. I shuddered. The music had no good associations for me.

“Now get on the mats.”

I walked toward the mats, keeping distance between Ted and me. The gun followed my every move, smooth and sure. I felt a little dizzy, but I couldn’t be sure if that was from the tension, the adrenaline, the gunshot, or just lack of sleep. When I stepped onto the mat, he flicked his hand and sent the gun skittering away into the warehouse.

Now that was interesting. Ted, throwing a gun away? I never would have done that. But then, I didn’t know how to use a gun. Did I? I gave my head a little shake, blinked rapidly, and got slapped for my troubles.

It was quick, not one to rock my head around, just a smack to get my attention. “C’mon, you’ve got to be better than that,” Ted said.

“Stop it.” 

He smacked me again, harder. “What is it, Rachel? Has living with the monsters made you immune to pain?” His closed fist hit the wound on my arm. I yelped, and had time to feel an arm around my throat, then I was flat on my back, trying to catch my breath.

“Get up!” he yelled. “Get the fuck up!”

I rolled over slowly, hands and knees.

Ted took a step, and the flat of my foot lashed out, caught him in the thigh. I’d been aiming higher, but he was one wiry fucker. I wasn’t really trying to hurt him anyway; most of the energy from the impact, I used to roll to my feet, with distance between us. My hands came up, and I stood profile to him. I grinned at him. “I’m up,” I said softly.

The first three blows, I blocked with my forearm before taking a shot at his jaw. I had to dodge a sweep-kick, and that took enough concentration that he got another jab at my stomach. “Too slow,” he said, coming at me again. He grabbed my wrist, and I reversed the grip, twisting him over my hip, but he rolled around me, and took me down. I moved as his foot slammed on the mat where my knees had been. “Too slow!” he yelled.

Enough of this shit. I didn’t bother to get up, just spun on one knee and grabbed for his ankle holster. I had my hand around the .38, lifted it toward him...

...and froze, with the barrel of a gun touching my forehead.

I snarled silently, furious, but unable to even twitch. One by one, I uncurled my fingers from the grip and let it drop to the floor. His foot swept it away, and he took a step back, out of arm’s reach. I lifted my eyes, but still didn’t look up. He had the gun.

Another shot, and the CD player died in a squelch of sound. The music stopped. “You’re not that fucking good,” Ted said. “You never were.” He turned and stalked out of the warehouse, snatching up his shirt on the way by.

If you’ve never been in a fight, here’s something you may not know: You never know how badly you’ve been hurt until after it’s over.

Not that I didn’t feel like a whiny brat, ‘cause I did, but there was a long burn-looking mark on my arm where I’d been shot, my left arm was badly wrenched (I think from one of the throws), my stomach ached where I’d been punched, and dammit, I had a friction burn on my wrist. 

This is why I’m a witch and not a martial artist. I was like most people I knew; I’d never been in a real fight. The closest I got was a couple of girl-fights in junior high. Technically, I suppose I still hadn’t been in a real fight, but I was now prepped to avoid them in the future.

Still, I was pretty good at urban survival, and once I got over my bout of self-pity, I took stock of my situation. Stranded in an empty warehouse in a strange city after midnight, with about thirty dollars in cash, two guns, and my bag of magic tricks. So it wasn’t all bad.

I was pushing twenty-four hours without sleep, and groggy witches are not much use. I could stay up longer with fewer bad effects if I gave my body the fuel to do it, but I also hadn’t eaten in about seven hours, and that wasn’t going to suffice. I could walk out of here and try to find a pay phone, call home, and get them to call Alec’s cell phone; I could stay here the night and try to do the same thing in the morning; or I could try to whip up a little magical assistance.

Given that Alec was probably freaked about now, I thought it best to try to find him now. If I failed, I could always get some sleep and try again in the morning. I really wasn’t in favor of walking around out there. I didn’t know the areas to avoid, I didn’t know where to find safety, and although I had two guns, the only way they were going to be of any use to me is if I found a way to reliably let out my inner homicidal maniac. 

I got my traveling magic kit out and spread out the contents, trying to think what I could do with the stuff at hand. I set the roll of white leather to one side. It was a nifty little magical gadget I had whipped up at home; when spread out, it would use its stored energy to create a little space of purified energy, a space in which I could work as long as I didn’t use any big gestures. I set the feather next to it. The feather was a kick-ass tool for channeling magical energies, but until I knew what I was going to do, it wasn’t much help. The bag of stones fell into my hand next, and I shook them out into my palm.

Speculatively, I eyed the five clear quartz stones among the more colorful glitter of others. Quartz itself isn’t rare, but just try to find five same-sized flawless pieces, and you’ll understand why I counted them among my rare stones. Together, they could focus a spell more intently than I could manage alone. That let me do more with the power I had. Which, absent any of the pack, wasn’t much.

Still, I’d learned a few new tricks about werewolves in my time as vargamor. Jacob and Katherine had this neat thing they did that would let them call the pack to them, even if the pack members didn’t want to obey. As far as I could tell, it had something to do with the pack bond, the pack’s acceptance of them as leaders, and their own wolf energy.

I wasn’t a wolf, and I didn’t have anywhere near the power that Jacob and Katherine could muster, but then I didn’t need to summon an entire pack and I didn’t even need to pull one against his will. I just had to touch Alec and give him an idea of the direction he ought to go to find me. That didn’t sound too beyond my capabilities.

Mind you, I’d never tried it before.

Course of action decided, I pulled the leather close and snapped it open, almost touching my knees. The stored spell sprang to life, and I checked the boundary. It extended in a tiny globe just barely over the top of my head, encompassing me and it neatly. Nice to know it worked in the field as well as it did at home. But the stored magic wouldn’t last long. I set out the five crystals at the invisible points of a star. A quick push of my will told them how to talk to each other, in what pattern, and the actual lines of the pentagram spilled into life in front of me.

I closed my eyes, searched inside myself for the bond that I had accepted when I’d taken the position of vargamor. But I wanted the aid of the quartz, so the call went from my magic, to the bond, to the crystals, then out into the world. It was soft, subtle, and a far cry from what I’d been a part of at the lupanar. A breath of a suggestion and not a demand, it drifted away from the warehouse like the vestiges of smoke. I eyed it, with only half my attention on the call. It seemed to be what I wanted, however, and I sank into a light trance to better maintain the stability of the link.

I called. And called. And called.

Although it is possible to trance deeply enough to be utterly unaware of your surroundings, my own was far shallower than that. The sound of a door opening in the warehouse snapped me out of it, and the call vanished. Good thing, too. As carefully as I’d hoarded my energy, I was about tapped out. Check that, I thought as I wobbled to my feet, I was entirely tapped out.

It wasn’t a good feeling. It wasn’t a feeling I’d had in awhile, in six months to be precise. I consoled myself with the knowledge that a good feed and a solid night’s rest would put me to rights, and if I didn’t have that kind of time there was always Alec...

And then I thought I understood what Ted had been so angry about. Not so much the potential personality theft, although he certainly had some issues to work out on that score. My memory flashed back to October, to witch hazel and a wounded Ted on my loveseat.

_I twitched. Refocusing on the matter at hand, I cleaned his lip with the witch hazel. "The problems," I began anew, stressing the plural, "are that one, energy theft is a bad thing. It does ugly things to your soul. Even if it’s willingly donated, it’ll eventually not be enough. It’s like voluntarily making yourself a vampire, requiring the life of others in order to live. Two, this is Jacob we’re talking about. If he ever found out how much I want that connection, he’d hold it over me for the rest of my life. I’d never get free of him."_

_"So you gave up all that to maintain your independence."_

_"Of course."_

_His answer was soft. "Well, good for you."_

And now, here I was, exactly what I had been afraid I’d become. A vampire, happy that Alec was back not because it meant he was safe, but because it meant I’d get a meal. A fix. I could drain some of his energy off to make myself feel better.

Oh my god.

No matter what, I had to leave the pack in May. I could live out my commitment to them. I could not, no matter what, use that energy outside of my duties as vargamor. I couldn’t.

My jaw set, I turned to face the open door, bracing myself to be near Alec yet not take the energy that I used to tap so freely. At least, I comforted myself, I had done the spell entirely with my own abilities. At least those hadn’t gone entirely rusty. I’d managed to do the spell correctly.

Only the man who stepped into the light wasn’t Alec. I didn’t recognize him, although I did recognize him as a werewolf. I hadn’t done the spell right at all.

He was tall, at least six feet. By the cast of his features, he was of Asian descent. His black hair was short and spiky, absolute cutting-edge. He was wearing a suit, one of particularly nice tailoring that even Devan would appreciate. It was black, all of it: black shirt, black tie, black jacket and pants. His shoes bore a polish that shone even in this dim light. His head tipped slowly to one side as he inspected me.

When I had risen, I had broken the shelter of the altar. I felt oddly exposed, but I knew enough about werewolf culture to know better than to look uncomfortable. After a moment, I also realized I was still meeting his eyes. In my own pack, even in a tense situation I had the right to do that to anyone except Jacob or Katherine without it being considered a challenge. But I was in another pack’s territory, unescorted, wandering about casting spells. I looked down at his chest, a subtle show of submission that didn’t require groveling.

Of course, I’d grovel too, if I needed to. What’s a little pride between friends, after all?

It was his turf; the introduction was mine to make. “I’m Rachel Davenport, vargamor to the Langer Wald pack,” I said, trying to remember the forms. “I’ve only come to meet a friend; my business is not with your pack.”

He arched a black eyebrow at me, and I felt my face grow warm. 

“A friend who... shot me, beat me up, and left me in a warehouse, admittedly,” I said, abandoning the forms in favor of truth. “I came with a member of my pack, but he was left behind at the airport, not by my choice. My call was meant for him and him alone, but it’s not a ... an ability I’ve used before. I’m sorry if I bothered your pack.”

He still didn’t say anything. 

“Uh... you do speak English, right?”

“Yeah, I heard you,” he answered. “That’s just one of the three stupidest things I’ve ever heard in my life.”

“If I told you I left my luggage with my cell phone in it back at the airport, would it make it the stupidest thing? I like to do things right.”

He didn’t smile, but I heard a snort of laughter from back in the darkness behind him. Oh well. At least I was amusing somebody.

Another man joined the Man In Black. I wondered fleetingly how many of them there were, but the new guy was worth paying attention to. He was a little taller than his friend, and looked like pure corn-fed farm boy. Long brown hair brushed his shoulders, with just a hint of a wave to it and touched with hints of lighter colors. He was hard and broad in all the right places, narrow and lean where a man ought to be. He moved with an easy confidence that told me he was the man in charge here, not the Man In Black. His jeans were faded at the thighs, and he had on a forest green sweater that looked soft and warm enough to cuddle up with on a cold winter night.

In short, yum. 

But life and death situations aren’t really the time or place to be ogling men, no matter how delicious they were to the eye.

“I don’t think she’s a threat, Shang-Da,” he said. “No one would make up a story like that.” He grinned at me, teeth flashing white in his tanned face. He had a dimple. Oh, my heart. Dimples.

I risked a smile back, and tried not to look stupid.

He stepped forward, hand extended. “Hi,” he said. “Richard Zeeman, Ulfric of the Thronnos Rokke clan.”

That took me aback on about twenty different levels. If he had the power to be Ulfric, I should have sensed something, but there was nothing magical there. Plus, werewolves almost never offered to shake hands, and no one who knew anything offered to shake hands with a witch. He certainly hadn’t given the information in any kind of formalized way. It was like meeting an Amway salesman who just happened to be able to feed me my own still-beating heart.

I was only trying to be polite, so I took his hand. But I had forgotten, and he had never known. I had forgotten how drained I was. I had forgotten that the urge to drain energy was a reflex. I had forgotten that flesh-to-flesh put me inside whatever shields he had. And he had probably never known.

Wolf energy spilled out of him and into me, the power of a true Ulfric, and for one glorious moment, it was wonderful. It lit up all the dark places inside of me, and made me feel whole again. Even if he wasn’t my pack. Even if he wasn’t my Ulfric. I was used to dealing with power like this, I knew how to let it flow through me without cooking me, and for half a second, I thought that was the worst this particular mistake was going to get.

Then something else in him woke up. Something dark and malign stirred, lifted its head, and looked at me. I caught a fleeting impression of dark eyes, then blue ones. Blackness, cold and bitter as a dark-ice dragon, roared to life and slammed into me.

I was out of the link and conscious only long enough to hear the echoes of Richard’s strangled shout, my own scream, and then I was gone, falling into the absence of everything.


	5. Chapter 5

I woke, if you want to call it that, feeling burned from the inside out. Acid scoured my nerve endings. I tried to scream, but what came out was a thin wail. Blindly, I shoved away from the source of the agony, and smacked into a wall.

“Rachel?” I knew the voice. Alec, but he didn’t sound right. Hoarse, tired, worn-down. 

I tried to see him, but couldn’t clear my vision. I tried to speak, but couldn’t get the words out. It was somewhere between a groan and a squeak, I think. I coughed, and tried again. “Ow,” I said.

“Thank god,” he sighed, relieved. “Are you all right?”

No. I braced my hands under me and attempted to lever myself into a moderately upright position, but that proved to be too much effort, and I gave in gracelessly. “I think I’m going to throw up,” I rasped.

“Please don’t. You already did once. Stinks in here.”

Now that he mentioned it... My stomach rolled over on itself, and I gagged. There wasn’t anything to come up, though, and after a moment the reflex passed. “Kill me,” I muttered.

“I think they’re considering it.”

My eyes functioned, enough to tell me we were in what looked like a cell, one without a window or any furniture. Alec was propped up against a wall, and he had definitely seen better days. Claw marks criss-crossed his chest, another wide set of slashes had at one point laid his face open. They were healing, I saw, but they hadn’t been there the last time I’d seen him.

“How long was I out?” I asked, managing to sit up this time. Yay me.

“I don’t know,” he confessed. “A day, I think.” His eyes snapped to the door, and he laid a finger over his lips to silence me.

I heard what he heard, footsteps and voices, angry ones. A woman and a man. The woman was speaking in clipped, angry tones.

“Stop being a noble ass, Richard. For all you know, they were sent here to kill you.”

“And for all we know, they weren’t. Jason said she’s awake. I’ll get answers, Anita, but I’ll do it my way.”

“Your way? You can’t offer these people milk and cookies and expect them to fall all over themselves to tell you everything.”

His reply was nearly a growl. “I said I’ll get answers, and I will. Or maybe you’d rather I just shot them and dumped the bodies somewhere. That’s more your style, isn’t it?”

They were silent for a minute, then the woman spoke again. “Get answers, Richard, or I will. It wasn’t just you they fucked with.”

A distant door opened and closed, and I heard a sigh. Keys rattled, and the door to our room opened. I remembered Richard from the warehouse, but I didn’t know the blond were with him. Most importantly, Richard was carrying a tray. It wasn’t milk and cookies, but it was food.

He walked all the way in, setting the tray down on the floor between me and Alec. Neither of us moved for a minute. I took a visual survey: sliced apples, lunchmeat, crackers, and a half-gallon milk jug filled now with water.

Richard watched us, unsmiling. We watched him. Suspicion on all sides, but my stomach soon broke the stalemate. It growled at me. Five seconds ago, I had been trying to throw up. Now I was starving. Great. I blushed.

The blond were chuckled, actually grinned at me. He was appealing, even under the circumstances, with a native charm that seemed out of place at the moment. 

Even Richard managed a slight smile, nudging the tray toward me. “Go ahead,” he said. “Alec ate earlier. It’s not poisoned.”

I didn’t think it was, not really. I picked up an apple slice and refrained from stuffing it in my mouth, eating like a civilized starving woman. “Where are we?” I asked, mouth full. So much for manners.

Richard sat back on his heels. “I’ll answer some of your questions,” he said, “but first I need you to answer mine.”

I glanced at Alec.

Richard caught the look, saying, “He wouldn’t talk until he knew you were alive. We brought you in here with him. He woke you up.”

He wasn’t very good at this questioning-the-prisoners bit, having already answered some questions I hadn’t yet had time to ask. The burning pain now had a cause I understood; Alec had attempted to share his energy with me, but I was still raw from whatever had passed between Richard and me. Well, it had worked. I was recovered enough to eat. I just wasn’t anxious to try touching energy again, not for awhile.

I swallowed the apple slice and took another, finding the sweet tartness satisfied both hunger and thirst simultaneously. “What do you want to know?”

“Who are you?”

“I told you. I’m the vargamor of the New York City pack. This is Alec. We came here to meet a friend of mine, but got separated. I tried to call Alec, but got you instead.”

“You reached me,” Alec said softly. “They got there before I did, that’s all.”

“He saw us carrying you out,” Richard said, picking up the narrative thread. “I think he thought we had killed you.”

I eyed Alec, shoving another apple slice down my throat. “You attacked them? Getting a little full of yourself, aren’t you?”

He scowled at me. I gave him a grin that was about half the wattage I could normally summon, and ate some turkey.

“Rachel. What happened when we shook hands?”

Even remembering was giving me a headache. I tried to think of how to explain it properly. “I thought at first that I had just tapped into your energy. It happens sometimes, when I’m drained to the dregs. It was automatic; I didn’t mean to do it, but since I’ve been vargamor, I’ve gotten used to doing it, I guess. I think something inside me sensed your wolf energy and assumed it was ok to take some. Only ... only the wolf isn’t the only thing inside you.

“I remember darkness,” I said. “And cold. And death. It defended you. Threw me out.” I shook my head rapidly, bringing on a sharp protest from my head but at least the memories stopped. “Then I woke up here.”

Richard straightened abruptly, getting to his feet. He’d gone ashen, as ashen as a man that tan can get anyway. “Death and darkness,” he repeated. His lips thinned, and he turned on his heel and stalked out the door. After half a heartbeat, the blond went with him, giving us not so much as a backward glance.

I blinked at Alec. “What’d I say?”

He shrugged, looking just plain tired. “Eat the food. Get some rest. They’ll take awhile to decide anything.”

I took his advice, finishing all the food on the plate and drinking most of the water. Salty lunchmeat and sweet apples did a lot to restore my electrolyte levels, and eventually my headache faded to manageable proportions. We used more of the water to clean the wounds we had, but Alec insisted I use most of it. He wasn’t really susceptible to disease.

A full stomach and satisfied thirst were enough to let me go back to sleep. Alec settled back to do likewise, and I pillowed my head on his chest. His body temp was higher than normal, as it always is when a were is trying to heal, but it made the room more comfortable for me.

I don’t know how long we were asleep when someone came in again. This was a new someone, a tiny someone, almost itty-bitty. The impressions were dichotomous, though, because even for a little woman, she seemed to take up all available space. Her skin was pale porcelain, skin I tried to get but eventually gave up because the cosmetics were too expensive. Her eyes were large and nearly black, and she had an overabundance of curly hair so black that light vanished into it. I blinked blearily at her and tried to figure out what was going on now.

“Who were you meeting in that warehouse?” she asked. 

“No one,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “I met him at the airport. He was picking me up. Then he took me to the warehouse.”

“Who?”

Did I really want to bring Ted into this? I was mad at him, sure. But if I was in trouble now, it would only get worse if I mixed him up with this pack of wolves. They’d be angrier, he’d be angrier, and either way I’d end up catching hell. “It’s not important.”

She jerked a clip of ammo out of her jeans pocket. “These came from one of the guns in that warehouse,” she said. “Half of them are normal, but half of them are silver and mercury. Vampire-killers.”

I knew the bullets. They were a memory in my head from the first time I had gone all psycho-killer. Ted manufactured them personally, when he knew he’d be seeing vampires. He had been carrying at least three guns, one of which he’d taken with him. Did he normally go around with a half-load of custom made ammunition? I searched my memory, and came up blank.

From what Devan had told me, I knew this pack was intimately mixed-up with the local vampire sect. Abruptly, I decided to toss my lot in with Ted. They wouldn’t like it if they knew he was prepped to kill them. 

Her eyes narrowed at me. She had read my expressions, I guessed. Softly, she asked, “Did Edward put you up to this?”

I blinked, surprised, before I could squelch the emotion. 

“He did, didn’t he?”

Well, if she already knew him... “Do I really look like someone Edward would send to do his dirty work?”

Her turn to blink. I caught a glimpse of confusion before her face shut down entirely. It was like looking at a mannequin. I had to learn how to do that.

She left, almost exactly as Richard had earlier – a pivot, a few strides, a closed door. Nothing said in the way of farewell, nothing to indicate when or if we’d be getting out of here.

I looked at Alec. He shrugged. “This is fun,” I remarked. “Next time, let’s go to Cuba. We could start a junta. I’ve never started a junta.”

He frowned at me. “Are you speaking English?” he asked.

I sighed and settled back down against his chest. We were quiet for a moment. “We could play ‘I Spy’,” I offered.

He wrapped an arm around me. “Go to sleep, Rachel.”

“Alec?” I whispered.

“Hm?”

“I’m scared.”

His arm flexed, and he pulled me on top of him entirely. After draping his other arm over me, he began to rock ever so slightly, and nuzzled the top of my head. It was all he could offer. I was glad he hadn’t resorted to platitudes. I liked him a little bit better for not trying. 

I studied the wall, cradled close to a man who kept me alive solely so I could catalyze his rise to power, locked in a cell by people I didn’t know in a place I didn’t know, far away from home. That wasn’t helping, so I tried adding up the good points about my current situation. Ted didn’t know where I was, that was probably a good thing. I could’ve been stuck in here with Kincaid. Or Ryan, now that would’ve been really bad. And at least the werewolves didn’t seem bad. They weren’t vampires...

“Anita Blake,” I blurted out, sitting up.

Alec grunted as my elbow drove into bad parts of his anatomy. “What?”

I stood, slowly, stretching cramped muscles. “Anita Blake. I think that woman who was in here was Anita Blake.”

“Who the hell is Anita Blake?”

“Do you never read gossip magazines?”

“I don’t wipe my ass with gossip magazines. What are you on about?”

“Anita Blake’s an animator, a really good one.” I hesitated, wondering if the word ‘good’ applied to animators, then let it go. “Like, the only one in the country who can raise incredibly old dead people without having to kill elephants to do it. And she’s a vampire executioner. There was this big drama raised when she started dating the Master of the City where she lives.”

Alec’s eyes narrowed. “And where does she live?”

“Well... y’know.... here. Saint Louis.”

“And you didn’t feel this was pertinent information?”

“I thought everyone knew! It was on E!, for God’s sake. They showed up at a club opening together, executioner and vampire. Hell, I think even People did a small spread.”

He passed a hand over his head and pried himself up off the floor. “Okay,” he said, “let’s say she is Anita Blake. Does it help us or hurt us?”

A fair question, so I gave it some attention and paced around a little. I only paced a little because there wasn’t enough room for pacing a lot. Finally, I sighed and shrugged. “I don’t know,” I confessed. “I don’t know enough about her, just some stuff I sort of remember from a couple of trade journals and the occasional story on the television.” I chewed my lips and gave it more thought. “Hey, you don’t suppose she’s the lupa, do you?”

“What?”

“Well, what Devan said. The lupa of the pack is supposedly getting horizontal with the Master of the City. Anita Blake’s dating the Master of the City...” I trailed off, let him fill in the eensy gap.

“Ok, first of all, vampires? Not known for their fidelity. He’s probably doing more than just two women. Second of all, vampire executioner, animator, and lupa? I don’t think so.”

“Devan said the lupa was rumored to not be one of you.”

“I don’t care what Devan said, that’s absurd.”

“Is the moon up or something? Because you’ve abruptly morphed into Prick Wolf.”

He scowled, then paused. Alec’s nice like that. “Yeah,” he said. “I guess it is.”

“Any idea how long until full?”

I watched his eyes shift as he weighed experience versus current status. “Three days, maybe,” he said, uncertain.

My jaw dropped, only about a quarter of an inch, but still. Three days? That meant we’d been in Saint Louis for three days. I’d been unconscious a hell of a lot longer than one day. I caught his grim expression and knew he’d done the math, same as me.

But it wasn’t a good idea to give a werewolf unpleasant things to dwell on, this close to a full moon. “Gee, no wonder I have to pee,” I said. “I say we bust out, find ourselves a bathroom, maybe grab a couple of showers, a change of clothes – “

“A good game of backgammon, and a suite at the Taj. Keep dreaming.”

I shrugged. “Ok, but I really do have to pee.”

We knocked, we yelled, we did everything but get someone to open the door. Finally, I warned Alec, “Either we get out of here, or I’m peeing in the corner.”

He sighed, eyed the door. “I can try,” he said.

I frowned. “Hey, what’m I, the sidekick? I can open the door, you know.”

He looked surprised. “It’s locked.”

“Ok, clearly I spend way too much time doing wolf-magic and pack-magic and not enough doing any other kind. I mean, give me a break, I’m a frickin’ witch over here.”

“So you can magic the door open?”

“You want the theory, or the short version?”

“Short version.”

Didn’t have to think about that long, did he? “I tell the lock it’s time for it to open, and the lock believes me.”

“The lock believes you? How can a lock believe anything? It doesn’t have a mind.”

“Look, it’s magic, ok? Just like there are a bunch of different ways you could open the door – tear it off its hinges, undo the hinges, remove the jamb, break through the door – there are a lot of ways to do stuff with magic. I could enhance the door’s doorness, I could –“

“The door’s doorness? What the fuck are you talking about?”

I took a deep breath. “Later,” I said. “If you still want to know when we get out of here, I’ll tell you. But I really have to pee.”

“Fine, Glenda. Hex the door.”

I wasn’t going to hex the door. I could have. That’d show him. But instead, I set my hand on the door, twisted together thin strands of my own magic, and changed reality’s idea of this particular lock from a locked lock to an unlocked one.

The door swung open. Alec prevented me from going first, peeking out into the hall. “Incredible,” he muttered. “No guards.”

“Good,” I whispered, following him out. “I’d rather pee first before having to explain that I was only looking for the little girl’s room.”

I clung close to Alec as we prowled around. Our cell proved to be one of four in a basement level. The stairs led us to a long hallway, and I chose the door at the end of it. It opened into a bedroom at the same time both lush and stark; plush white rug with an oriental carpet on it done mostly in shades of black, white furniture with black and red accent pillows, and an enormous bed with black satin sheets. It looked familiar, though I knew damn good and well I’d never been there before.

On the (Roman-orgy-sized) bed, a ripple of movement resolved itself as the blond werewolf who had accompanied Richard. His lips peeled away from his teeth, and his eyes were already wolf-amber. Beside me, I heard Alec’s growl start at a normal pitch and end somewhere in the James Earl Jones range.

“Whoa, down boys,” I said, holding a palm out toward them both. “We’re not here for this. I just have to pee.”

I watched the blond more than Alec. His lips lowered, but he crawled across the silk sheets and his shoulders didn’t move like mine would. I tried for more of his human half. “Look, what’s your name?” I asked softly, stepping in front of Alec.

He didn’t answer me. He was waiting.

“I swear, I swear, I have to use the bathroom. That’s all.”

His brow furrowed, and he sat back. I noticed he was naked, but it didn’t seem too important at the moment. Then he grinned at me, and his eyes warmed to summer-blue. “In there,” he said, jerking a thumb.

“Thank god,” I muttered, scampering across the floor.

The bathroom was as elegantly appointed as the bedroom. The tub could have served as an Olympic venue, and was festooned with half-burned candles. Towels you could sink into waited near the tub. Even the air smelled soft and sweet, like roses, and I saw bouquets of the things everywhere. It was the bathroom God would have had, if he needed one. But God was never such a hedonist.

I was in Satan’s bathroom.

But I had business to attend to and I did, keeping one ear open for trouble. Whatever was passing between Alec and the blond werewolf, it was relatively quiet though I wouldn’t have guessed it was serene. I spared only a fleeting wistful thought of the bubble bath that the tub could have afforded me, and walked back into the bedroom to find Alec leaning against the wall of the bathroom, the blond were sitting cross-legged on the bed. “Done,” I proclaimed. “Your turn. Wait’ll you see the tub.”

Alec went into the bathroom without a second thought. I guess he decided the blond was safe enough for me to be around. Then again, I was really getting good at wolf magic. One lone werewolf wasn’t much of a problem, especially if there was a bit of distance between us.

“Hi,” I said.

“You picked the lock?”

I shook my head. “No. I told the lock to open, and it did.”

A bemused grin flirted with his lips before flashing into a full-fledged chuckle. “Boy, is Jean-Claude gonna have words with someone,” he predicted.

“Who’s Jean-Claude?”

He nodded his head toward the door. “Him.”

I snapped my head around.

“Him” was leaning against the door jamb in a position that would have seemed affected in someone less confident. He was taller than I was, maybe near six feet, with soft black hair that brushed past his shoulders. It bore the slightest trace of a wave, like curly hair blown straight. His eyes were everything sapphires always wanted to be when they grew up.

“Wow,” I said. “What’d you people do, run all the ugly guys out of the city?”

“People like you keep bringing the cute ones in,” offered the werewolf on the bed. “Then they just stay.”

It couldn’t have been a threat, but for some reason it settled my humor. “Hate to break with tradition, then. We’ll be leaving together.”

“Perhaps,” said Jean-Claude. “Though much remains to be seen. Jason, go and speak to Ming-Na and discover what became of those I asked to guard our guests.”

Jason slid off the bed and padded past me, picking up a robe on his way by. I hadn’t realized before how short he was, but if I hadn’t seen him naked I’d wonder if he was even post-pubescent. But I had. He was. Believe me.

My eyes skittered around the room as I tried not to stare at Jean-Claude. With Jason gone, some hint of normalcy had fled with him and the air was growing prickly with tension. I wondered what was taking Alec so long.

“Monsieur Zeeman seems to believe you are not a threat to him,” he said. He pushed away from the door frame and prowled across the carpet.

I hung out with werewolves. I had seen some truly gifted prowlers in the last few months. But this wasn’t... wasn’t that. This movement was oiled and lithe and sleek. “Uh,” I remarked. “I mean, we’re not. Not intentionally. I mean, y’know, that thing at the warehouse went all pear-shaped but it wasn’t meant to harm anyone.”

He was close, close enough for me to smell the subtlety of his cologne, but I couldn’t sense anything from him. I knew who he was, once I’d seen him. I had seen his picture before. He was the media face of the vampires, and worth the seeing. Jean-Claude, Master of the City, but from where I was standing he could have been Joe the Master Plumber. 

His fingers captured a lock of my hair, slid down it. I looked sidelong at his gesture, and he unpinched his fingers to release a bit of fluff my hair had picked up from somewhere. “But there are so many kinds of harm,” he said.

“Alec?” I called. “We have company.”

“Do not fear for your friend,” Jean-Claude said. “See, here he is now.”

A massive wolf paced into the room from the bathroom. I can’t say I recognized the wolf form of everyone in the pack, but I had no doubts that it was Alec. The first pangs of real fear tapped against my stomach. “I didn’t hear him shift,” I said.

Alec in wolf form sat beside Jean-Claude and stared at me. “I know,” Jean-Claude said. “It would have been inconvenient for you to.” His hand rested lightly on Alec’s head. “So very many kinds of harm,” he murmured.

He had made Alec shift. He had some kind of hold on my erstwhile bodyguard. He had used some damned vampiric mind trick on me. And I hadn’t known any of it until far too late. 

I kept my eyes on Alec’s calm furry face. “All right,” I said. “I get it. You’ve got all the cards and it’s your table. Hell, they’re even your chips, your chairs, and you hold the mortgage on the building. So what’s the game?”

He chuckled. I knew that chuckle. I knew that sound. It ruffled up and down my spine like a soft arpeggio of promise. It was Cristan’s laugh. “The game, mon petite lapin, is a simple one. All you must do to play is to look at me.”

I hate that game. Look at him. Meet his eyes. Let him sleaze around my mind, my soul. I’d be completely helpless. Now admittedly, I wasn’t sure how much that was different than my current state, but at least I could still scream.

“You invaded my territory,” he said, “attacked my wolf, and walk about my home freely. Am I still to believe you mean us no harm, when you will not even take the one test that would prove you innocent?”

“I’d feel better if Richard were here,” I said.

“Would you?” he asked. I still wasn’t looking up at him. “Why is that? Monsieur Zeeman captured you, defeated your friend, brought you here, left you here. Why would you trust him?”

“I don’t know,” I said. And I didn’t. Maybe I shouldn’t. But it was the open smile, the handshake, the apples and turkey. And yes, it was the dimples. Maybe they were playing good-monster/bad-monster with me, but it had worked. “I just do.”

“And you do not trust me.”

I hadn’t meant to laugh. It probably wasn’t a proper response. “I don’t trust vampires.”

“You do not?”

“I do not. They’re dead things pretending to be alive. They’re walking lies. They’re not supposed to exist, but here they are.”

Cold fingers grabbed my chin, grinding a gasp of pain from me. He yanked my head up to meet his eyes, the blue vanishing in the widening black of his pupil. Alec didn’t even so much as whimper. “Oui,” Jean-Claude said. “Here we are. And here you are.”


	6. Chapter 6

I woke up... well, let’s just say “later” and leave it at that. I probably shouldn’t even call it “woke up”, since that implies some amount of conscious control, and I had none. I could see; I was standing behind Jean-Claude as he lounged in a chair behind a desk. We were in an office, one as opulent as the bedroom and bathroom had been. Across the desk was Anita Blake, looking most righteously pissed. Behind her was Richard, and the blond werewolf, Jason. Something warm and soft leaned against my leg, which meant my leg was bare. I couldn’t make my head or eyes shift, though.

“Asking a few questions is one thing, Jean-Claude, but you have gone way past the limit.”

“There are no limits, ma petite, when it comes to the safety of my people.”

“And I suppose she jumped you?”

“Non, but I could arrange for such a thing if it would amuse you.”

It dawned on me that my lack of physical control was a symptom. I was held, I realized, not physically but mentally. Magically. I couldn’t so much as blink, or lift my own hand. I couldn’t speak. But I breathed, and my eyes blinked. Just not by my will. By his will, I knew. And with that knowledge, I began to work my way free.

Evidently, it wouldn’t amuse her. “Let her go. Let them both go.”

“Or what? You will shoot me?”

“Will I have to?”

The fog around my consciousness was thinning. It’s possible I was just that good, but I had a feeling Jean-Claude was distracted. He didn’t really want to hold me any longer, and with his will to hold me diminished, my own will could reassert itself. I blinked, deliberately, then curled the fingers on my right hand. Progress.

Jean-Claude sighed. “Non, I do not believe this incident is worth such a contest. Perhaps another time, we will see how far we each will go. But, voila.”

I stumbled, managed to catch myself on the edge of the desk before faceplanting into it. High heels, I realized. I was wearing heels. Judging from the amount of my totter, they were four inches, easy. Evidently, being vampire-thralled had improved my balance. I sure couldn’t stand in the damned things now. First things first: I kicked the shoes off.

“Okay,” I said, pushing my hair off my face and attempting to regain some semblance of cool. “This vacation officially sucks.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's as far as I got when I learned that LKH doesn't approve of fanfic. So, to respect the author's wishes, I abandoned it. I vaguely recall there was something about Anita taking Rachel to see Edward while leaving Alec hostage, and Anita and Rachel joining forces to work out what had happened that left part of Edward in Rachel. I know that the upshot was she had essentially re-written her soul. Edward proved in the warehouse that she hadn't taken anything -- or at least he hadn't lost anything -- so she's stuck with her very own psychosis. It was supposed to come in handy for something, tho I can't remember what, something involving Richard's pack, and in the end Rachel and Alec go home thankful to be part of Jacob's pack. That's about all I can do for an ending. 
> 
> I liked Rachel's character enough to recycle her later into an original story that also had werewolves in it. Just not this set. This pack is too much a product of the world in which they're set to be taken out and given a new set of clothes (fur?). A pity; I really had fun exploring pack dynamics in this story.


End file.
